Overview

Summary

The objective of the Integrated Criminal Court Survey (ICCS) is to develop and maintain a national database of statistical information on appearances, charges, and cases in youth courts and adult criminal courts. The survey is intended to be a census of pending and completed federal statute charges heard in provincial-territorial and superior courts in Canada. Appeal courts, federal courts (e.g., Tax Court of Canada) and the Supreme Court of Canada are not covered by the survey. The survey includes information on the age and sex of the accused, case decisions, sentencing information regarding the length of prison and probation, and amount of fine, as well as case-processing and court workload indicators such as case elapsed time and case completion rates. These survey data are collected by the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics (CCJCSS) in collaboration with provincial and territorial government departments responsible for criminal courts. The collection of data is from administrative records, in which data are derived from records originally kept for non-statistical purposes. The data are collected to respond to the needs of the provincial, territorial and federal departments of justice and attorneys-general, researchers and policy analysts, academics and the media, as well as to inform the public on how youths and adults appearing in provincial-territorial and superior criminal courts are dealt with in Canada. The ICCS is an annual administrative data survey that was implemented to replace two previous micro-data surveys: the Adult Criminal Court Survey (ACCS, see legacy versions of record number 3312) and the Youth Court Survey (YCS, see record number 3309). The purpose of redevelopment was to collect new information related to the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). At the same time, it was an opportunity to integrate data collection and processing, implement a snapshot data collection strategy (collect appearances as they occurred rather than once the case was completed), and change survey definitions to more closely reflect court processing. Where available, preliminary data are processed and published quarterly. A complete, final ICCS data file is processed and published annually.

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